Sarah Huerta takes the sign memorializing her 15-year-old son, Moises Huerta Gonzalez, off her car following the sentencing of a teen gunman in Gonzalez’s murder at the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center on Thursday, May 23, 2024, in Dallas. Gonzalez was fatally shot on Jan. 30 in the 2500 block of Southland Street in South Dallas. He was 15.
The 17-year-old gunman sat stoically in a Dallas courtroom Thursday as he accepted his sentence: 25 years in the juvenile justice department for murder. He was 16 at the time of the shooting andA probation officer testified the state had made every effort to keep the teen at home and out of the kind of trouble that led him on Jan. 30 to the 2500 block of Southland Street, where he
Huerta has never been given an explanation, and knows only the details she’s been told by Trevor Melvin, the prosecutor on the case, or what she’s been able to piece together in her own desperate search for answers.When Huerta took the stand Thursday afternoon, she didn’t address the teen directly, instead using her statement to tell Judge Cheryl Lee Shannon that Moises was her happy, “golden child,” and that she misses him every day.
Rayna Huerta, 14, wears a shirt in memory of her late 15-year-old brother, Moises Huerta Gonzalez, as she helps her mother, Sarah Huerta, put her grandfather’s wheelchair in the trunk following the sentencing of a teen gunman in Gonzalez’s murder outside of the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center on Thursday, May 23, 2024, in Dallas. Gonzalez was fatally shot on Jan. 30 in the 2500 block of Southland Street in South Dallas. He was 15.
Huerta told the teen’s mother that this wasn’t her fault — it’s kids these days, it’s society. She said she imagines they’re a lot alike, two mothers trying to do their best.They both lost a child, Huerta said, but while one will come home years from now, all she has of Moises are memories. Like the time she laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe as Moises struggled to stick money in the wrong slot at the gas station.